WhatsApp bug found to be deleting old messages mysteriously; company responds

Many users have reported about the WhatsApp bug on Twitter.

Update: WhatsApp has just issued an official statement in response to this problem. The company added that it is aware of the issue and the developers are currently working on a fix for the people who were affected by it. We have added the complete statement by WhatsApp spokesperson below.

“We are aware of this bug and are working on a fix for the users who have encountered this issue.”

Some of the WhatsApp users on Android have noticed that their old messages got deleted mysteriously. It is reported that the problem is only with Android app and messages disappearing pattern is quite random. Many users reported on Twitter that their old messages from 2015 got deleted, but some saw the same issue with messages from 2018.

Apparently, the WhatsApp bug has existed since last month. According to a tweet shared by WABetaInfo, one of the user on Moto G4 Plus last month reported about this bug first. It said to have deleted WhatsApp chat history for the user in chronological order.

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WhatsApp hasn’t acknowledged the issue and there is no official statement as yet. One thing is clear, that the bug is only restricted to WhatsApp for Android and no iOS app user have reported it so far. Also, it doesn’t seem to be in-line with WhatsApp policy of deleting chat history for those who did not back up their stored data and chats on Google Drive.

To remind you, after WhatsApp’s agreement with Google Drive in August, the company had confirmed that it will delete chat histories of those who don’t back up their data until certain date. The agreement allowed WhatsApp users to store their chat on Google Drive without the data being counted against cloud storage. At the time of the announcement, WhatsApp warned that any backups that had not been updated in over a year would also be automatically removed from the Google Drive storage.

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Google Drive offers total free storage of around 15GB, which also includes Gmail data and other Google apps. The ability to backup messages comes as a boon especially when you wish to switch devices or lose a smartphone and have to start using a new device. If you backup your WhatsApp messages, images and videos on Google Drive, it is important to know that it won’t be end-to-end encrypted. WhatsApp’s encryption works only on its own messaging platform and not outside its system.